Salamandra salamandra - Fire Salamander

Nutrition

 

The diet of Salamandra salamandra is very much like that of most other amphibians and a few reptiles.  Fire salamanders are considered carnivores, meaning they get their energy from eating other organisms.  Their diet consists of a variety of insects, slugs, and earthworms.  More specifically, the insects they consume include: grasshoppers, flies, beetles, spiders, centipedes and millipedes. As larvae, they will consume small water crustaceans and insects.  Each individual fire salamander chooses its own preferred type of food from the preceding list at an early age, usually after its larval stage. This will be their prey of choice for the remainder of their lives.

Fire salamanders have a number of specialized skills for hunting their prey. 

Several characteristics of their eyes lend to success in finding, tracking, and ultimately catching their prey.  Their eyes have the ability to distinguish the basic colors red, blue, green, and yellow from gray, which helps them to better distinguish prey from stationary objects.  There are also tremor-like movements that occur in their eyes which help them decipher between moving and stationary objects.  In the terrestrial adult stage, their eyes are very adept at focusing on objects a great distance away. This contributes greatly to their hunting success.

Also, when light is unavailable, the fire salamander will use olfactory senses when hunting.  This is a very important sense for them to possess as they are nocturnal creatures and do most of their hunting at night.  This type of hunting is also useful when their prey is stationary and therefore harder to detect.

Lastly, fire salamanders have a specialized tongue that is well suited for hunting.  Their tongues have the ability to shoot out faster than a human can blink.  Once their tongue is out, it will immediately latch onto their prey, and they will bring it into their mouth. 

The food that fire salamanders consume is usually very high in protein, therefore they produce lots of nitrogenous wastes. This is usually in the form of urea, a less toxic compound that requires very little water for excretion.  The source of their catabolic energy and anabolic biosynthetic needs comes from the carbon skeletons of protein-derived amino acids.  Because of this, they store very little fat and glycogen.  Since amphibians are ectotherms (Salamandra salamandra included), their heat source comes from their surroundings, leaving them with a low metabolic rate.

Now that we have learned about the fire salamander's nutritional habits, we will move to Reproduction

You can also review their Adaptations, or return to the Home page.

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